X-MAL DEUTSCHLAND

Melody Maker 1982

When I first heard X-mal Deutschland, on their debut single, "Schwarze Welt", I couldn’t believe it. Finally, after all this time, we had an all-girl band who could knock spots off their world-wide male counterparts. Here was a band of unbridled power and luminosity. Here was a band to cherish and kill for. In ’81 they were that rarest of commodities, a good band.

In 1982 I met them and took their first English gig full in the face, rejoicing in this beautiful event. They conquered The venue (yes, that heap of a place!) as fellow Europeans KaS Product had done before the,. We were all stirred for maximum overload.

When we met over doughnuts and my unobtrusive tape recorder they were all there. The mysterious fringe-hidden Manuela Rickers (guitar), the self-effacing Wolfgang Ellerbrock (bass, and a recent male addition), the mischievous Anja Huwe (vocals), the uproarious and blunt Fiona Sangster (synth) and Manuela Zwingmann (drums). What a brilliant name! Zwingmann.

All but Miss Zwingmann speak English, with Scot extracto Fiona helping out in occasional translation.

This scorching little outfit had started in late 1980 and, to date, have had two singles, both on the independent label ZickZack, a miniscule version of our own Rough Trade. Disregarding offers from major companies as a new movement developed within Germany, "Neue Deutrsche Welle" (New German Wave), the band kept to their own course and their own ideals, coming to loathe this so-called ‘New wave’ and taking a lot of stick from some of its main instigators. It seems that X-mal have not been as welcome as they should have been.

So they opted for an English label, popped into 4AD with a demo tape, and there sat a man called Ivo; clearly a man of considerable taste. His ears popped. He signed them up.

Talk to me.

Anja: "A load of really good bands went to major record companies and I can understand it really, because they can’t make money on independents. On a major they can. They can make music and interviews and photos and that’s okay. We didn’t want it."

What is this Neue Deutsche Welle?

Manuela Rickers: "They make pop music and sing in German, not English. That’s the only difference. The music’s quite old."

Anja: "That’s only nonsense, the ‘German Wave’. It’s nothing. It started when DAF became popular. They liked someone singing in German, and the music’s become more commercial. Silly lyrics!"

Fiona: "’Da Da Da’ is a good example, by Trio."

I thought that was supposed to be a joke record?

All (roaring): "No!! It’s serious."

Fiona: "Everyone knows it. They sing ‘Da Da Da’ in kindergarten. It’s absolutely disgusting. Germans like that kind of stuff. It’s a general trend. Each country has started doing its own music in its own language. Italy, Holland, everywhere. Germany was two month ahead, that’s all."

Seems a pretty natural thing to do want to do.

Manuela R: "Not for Germans it isn’t.!"

You don’t seem to like these bands. Is there any antagonism between them and you?

Anja: "There are some bands like us and some we that we like, but there are others that we don’t. Like Palais Schaumburg, we don’t like them or their music. We’re not interested in them. I think they don’t like our music. They think we are too English."

So do they treat you with disdain?

Anja: "Stain?"

Fiona translates.

Manuela R: "Not any more because now we’re making an album over here, they are very jealous. I think they hate us."

Anja: "When we started, they said ‘Oh my God, five girls!’"

Fiona: "’They look alright but they can’t play.’"

Manuela R: "They say, ‘Oh, it’s an English copy, but over here they say, ‘Oh, you’re different’!"

Fiona: "To them it’s The Banshees, Christ knows who else."

Manuela R: "Killing Joke, Depeche Mode…"

Depeche Mode! They’d have a heart attack coping with your sound.

Fiona: "They probably would. We almost had a heart attack when we read that."

The X-mal sound is a bruising melee of sublimely cohesive bass and drums which really do thud against your neck, that physical manifestation of sound which hardly ever appears. The guitar and synth often seem so closely aligned that the feeling of power getting out of control is hard t miss. Through all this rising excitement they have solid songs. I’ll leave it to you to buy the album rather than drivel on. This band are undeniably different. They’re hard.

Did the record companies make any offers purely because you were all girls?

Manuela: "The fact we were all girls was accidental."

Anja: "I think they were disappointed because we all had different hairstyles. Sometimes it’s easier being in an all-girl band because all the people come to see you, but it becomes harder too because you have to make good music. If you make mistakes they go, ‘typical!’"

Fiona: "You have to be better than an all-boy band or it’s ‘’Terrible! Get them off the stage!’."

Anja: "I think what the other girls do is okay because it is typical girl music. Like Malaria. But we want to make our music."

ZickZack took you on quite readily?

Fiona: "Alfred (the label boss) would do a record with anyone so it didn’t matter."

Anja: "He doesn’t like our music from the beginning, but he sys okay, you can do a record."

He didn’t like the music?

Fiona: "Alfred’s principle was anyone can make one, which means an equal chance. It also means he’s got no money now."

Anja: "We asked him if we could go to 4AD and he said, ‘Yes, it’s better for you’!"

Wolfgang: "He brought everything up and then all the best bands left, and they made money but not he."

Fiona: "That’s Alfred’s tragedy."

X-mal obviously feel relieved to be free of the irritation of their ignorant contemporaries, but they show their teeth too,.

Anja: "People know why we do this music, the older punks know. We don’t forget our roots. They know where we come from, but the younger ones don’t even remember the Sex Pistols! They say to me, ‘Have you heard the new Exploited single?’ and I haven’t even heard The Exploited!"

Manuela R: "They can’t understand that Wolfgang is playing. He’s playing bass, that’s all we want."

Fiona: "Everyone says to Wolfgang, ‘poor boy, with all those girls, I don’t envy you!’ Whereas it we were Mo-dettes type girls they’d be saying, ‘Christ, you lucky bugger!’"

Anja: "If there are boys in the audience they go, ‘Hey, get them clothes off!’ That is not the way.

"They boys now feel they can’t say anything. We did a gig where they were laying on the stage saying silly things so we said ‘get off!’. But they didn’t, so we smashed them off."

Fiona: "If you’re not trying to be a ‘girl band’ and anyone annoys you then you get at them. You attack them."

Don’t mess with the X-mals, they mean business.

They are the business.